On-going
series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2008
The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on AzerbaijanWindow on Eurasia: Original
Blog Article

Vienna, October 4 ­ Three
leading figures of the Russian opposition are calling on Washington
to reverse its decision to reduce Radio Liberty's Russian-language
broadcasts next year, lest Russian citizens, at a time when Moscow
has established "practically complete control" over
domestic radio and television lose a vital source of "objective
information."

The three ­ Vladimir Bukovsky,
Vladimir Kara-Murza and Boris Nemtsov - say that reducing such
broadcasts from abroad would make their struggle for freedom
that much more difficult according to the letter they wrote to
the US State Department, the Foreign Affairs Committees and the
Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress, and Presidential candidates
John McCain and Barak Obama.

(The Voice of America ended
Russian-language radio broadcasting earlier this summer not only
as part of a general cost-cutting effort, but because the affiliates
in Russia on which its programming was broadcast increasingly
refused, under pressure from the Russian government, to carry
VOA programs.)

As a result of the actions of
Vladimir Putin, they point out, "the citizens of Russia
no longer have access to objective information. Opposition leaders
are not allowed on the air." And last month, Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin put pressure on Ekho Moskvy, "the last major
[domestic] means of mass information." http://www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E5BE1112B25.html

"It is difficult to
understand," they write, "why, in this situation, the
Broadcasting Board of Governors [BBG] is taking a decision about
reducing Russian language broadcasting of Radio Liberty, which
is a rare voice of independent thought for hundreds of thousands
of radio listeners" in the Russian Federation and neighboring
countries.

And they dismiss as "illogical"
the BBG's explanation that it will use the resources now being
devoted to radio broadcasting for the station's Russian-language
website. "Government censorship in Russia," they note,
"affects mostly television and radio," while "the
Internet is independent." Moreover, they noted, most
Russians do not have access to the Internet.

Commenting on this letter, Sobkorr.ru
commentator Yuri Gladysh writes that "the names alone"
of the authors ­ "a legendary dissent of Soviet times,
a successful governor and vice premier who almost became president,
and a young journalist and politician" ­ "speak
for themselves."

Even the most inexperienced
political analyst, he continues, "would draw the same conclusion:
things are bad in a country when such people are forced to seek
support abroad" and to appeal in the case of that country
"not to the current leadership but rather to candidates
for the highest positions."

But Gladysh says he found something
else about all this "curious" as well. Many Russian
nationalists routinely claim that the US spends "enormous
sums" to carry out an information war against Russia. But,
in fact, Washington's decision here suggests that in the US,
as "in any normal country," "the need to save
the money of taxpayers" takes precedence.

In his view, the Sobkorr.ru
analyst continues, "this fact better than all the words
[of the nationalists] says that a desire 'to harm Russia' at
a minimum is not among the priorities of American policy, if
indeed, it exists at all." But the nationalists are likely
to complain about this American decision anyway, as an indication
that the US does not take Russia seriously enough!

However that may be, the
appeal of Bukovsky, Nemtsov and Kara-Murza is important for what
it says about the direction in which Russia under Putin and Dmitry
Medvedev is now moving and, especially regrettably, about the
role some in the West are currently playing in that regard.

As many recent commentaries
on the Russian Internet have pointed out, Vladimir Putin and
his regime have so restricted freedom of information and political
activity that in the words of one this week, "today in Russia
there is no one left who can say 'no' to the powers that be,
to explain where they are wrong" http://newsland.ru/News/Detail/id/303687/cat/42/

But instead of helping today's
Russians to struggle against authoritarianism as the US and other
Western governments did by Russian-language broadcasts in the
past, these governments are now, whether they realize it or not,
unintentionally assisting those like Putin who want to undermine
the freedoms earlier Western broadcasts helped those like Russians
to pursue.